Raising chickens and pigs and digging for wild vegetables, the county magistrate's promotion wa

Chapter 775 I've come to Huai'an to handle two matters.

"Let those in power be even bolder."

Li Shanchang smiled meaningfully, stroked his beard, and said, "Last year's three hundred Jinshi graduates and three hundred descendants of noble families make a total of six hundred usable people."

"Three hundred imperial examination graduates can replace three hundred county magistrates, and three hundred nobles can at least replace three hundred centurions."

"Now I finally understand what the prince consort meant when he said: If you don't do it, there are plenty of others who will."

"Even if half of them are good-for-nothings, and half of the remaining half will become corrupt officials, at least seventy-five of them will still be reliable."

"Even if they are only at a similar level to the students in Ningyang County, at least seventy-five counties can quickly promote the development of small-scale industries."

"Once these seventy-five counties develop like Ningyang County, it will at least drive the rapid development of seventy-five prefectures."

"How many prefectures does our Great Ming Dynasty have?"

As Li Shanchang finished speaking, Liu Bowen scoffed and said, "Aren't there seventy-five counties that are always complaining about a shortage of manpower?"

When Yang Dianfeng was in Ningyang County, he complained every day that there weren't enough people.

Even after arriving in Dengzhou Prefecture, they were still complaining every day about not having enough manpower.

Later, when his good students became county magistrates, they still complained every day that they didn't have enough manpower.

Liu Bowen said sarcastically, "Ningyang County now has more than 20,000 people. In addition to the more than 100,000 laborers, the number of people who have migrated there over the years is as high as 200,000."

"Let's assume 20,000 people per county. With 75 counties, that's at least 1.5 million people."

"May I ask, Your Excellency, where do you plan to get these 1.5 million people for them?"

"To migrate again from Jiangnan?"

"Or will they migrate from Sichuan or Shanxi?"

"Don't forget, the prince consort has a good student who is a county magistrate in Shanxi. His county has more than 30,000 people, and he still writes memorials every few days asking for people."

Li Shanchang glanced at Liu Bowen, stroked his beard, and said, "That's why I said I should advise the person in charge to be a little bolder."

Liu Bowen was slightly taken aback, and Li Shanchang continued, "Let's not worry about how many people they need for now, let's just talk about one thing, which is the population growth rate issue that the Prince Consort mentioned before."

"According to the statistics from the Ministry of Revenue, the current population growth rate of our Great Ming Dynasty is four per thousand."

"Last year there were 70 million people, and this year there will be an additional 280,000."

"But it's clear that there are two issues involved here."

"The first issue is that the Ministry of Revenue's statistics did not include many Tusi (chieftains)."

"The second point is that the population growth rate is not static."

"At least the population growth rate in the third year of Hongwu was only three per thousand, which is much lower than the current four per thousand."

"And there's an even more important point, a problem that the Ministry of Revenue couldn't compile, a problem that even Prince Consort Yang hadn't noticed."

Li Shanchang picked up his teacup, took a sip, and said, "In the past, the harvest from one mu of land was just so-so. It was more in good years and less in other years. The most influential factors on the harvest were drought, flooding, and locust plagues."

"Leaving aside floods and locust plagues, let's talk about this drought."

"With the water pump, at least the harvest can be preserved."

"With a good harvest, people feel at ease and will naturally have more children."

"Not to mention that the Ministry of Agriculture has already started exploiting Ningyang County's breeding resources, which will definitely increase grain production in the future."

"With so many factors combined, it wouldn't be surprising if the population growth rate increased to 0.8%."

Will there still be a shortage of people then?

"I'm afraid it's quite the opposite. There's a high chance that there won't be enough land to go around, and a group of people will be left without land and will have to work in workshops to earn money."

“If it’s just a five-year or even ten-year plan, we can ignore these things, but for a century-long plan, this issue must be taken into account.”

At this point, Li Shanchang couldn't help but scratch the back of his head.

The workshop is short-handed.

With a large population, there is a shortage of land.

With more land available, there will be a need to increase the number of garrisons, and various workshops will also increase accordingly.

And then they're fucking short-staffed again.

After this cycle repeats several times, will there be any spare land left in the world?

If there isn't enough land, then should we try to get people to have fewer children?

My scalp always feels a little itchy.

It seems I've been scammed again.

Damn it, this damn prime minister... no, this damn chief minister, I've really had enough of him.

Those useless censors in the Censorate spend all their time staring at Yang the Madman, yet they turn a blind eye to me, the current Grand Secretary. They are truly incompetent.

Li Shanchang glanced at Liu Bowen with great dissatisfaction, then suddenly snorted and said, "Brother Qingtian, your Censorate can't just focus on that prince consort. There are so many officials in our Ming Dynasty court."

……

The current prefect of Huai'an is named Xu Jingyu.

After taking office at the end of the fifth year of Hongwu, the first thing Prefect Xu did was to hand over all the government affairs of the prefecture to the Assistant Prefect of Huai'an Prefecture. He himself, accompanied by a servant and a clerk, spent more than three months traveling through all the two prefectures and nine counties under the jurisdiction of Huai'an Prefecture.

Then, Prefect Xu summoned all the prefects and magistrates of the two prefectures and nine counties under his command.

"I have come to Huai'an to take care of two things."

"The first thing was the water pump. Before the autumn harvest in the sixth year of Hongwu, every household in Huai'an Prefecture had to install a water pump. Each village also had to have a large irrigation water pump in the four directions of the farmland."

"The second matter is water conservancy. During my term in Huai'an Prefecture, I will repair the Huai River and the Grand Canal, and repair the three lakes in Huai'an Prefecture."

“If these two things are handled properly, the people will benefit, you will gain merit, and I will also benefit from it.”

"Anyone who hinders me in these two matters is risking my official position."

"You can imagine the consequences yourselves."

First, Xu Jingyu gave a show of force to the officials present, including the prefectural magistrate of Huai'an, the prefects of the two prefectures, and the magistrates of the nine counties. Then, he picked up his teacup and said with a forced smile, "Yancheng's main task this year is to clean up the beaches, lay out salt fields, and organize the coastal people to fish and produce salt."

"Huai'an has a heavy workload this year. First, we need to organize the people to reclaim wasteland and create more land suitable for planting yams and cattail shoots. Second, we need to clean up Baima Lake and organize the people to raise more shrimp and crabs."

"And Xuyi, your peaches are quite good. Organize more people to grow peaches. If you officials don't understand, let the people figure out how to cultivate bigger and sweeter varieties themselves."

"..."